How does Scan Media Folder Now work ...

[jjbrash2012]

Hi all - long time user or Subsonic here. As I've added music to my media folders over the years I've never had any issues with new music being scanned correctly and added to the library - until now. I bought a new album recently, in CD format. I prefer to buy CDs and then rip them to FLAC to store on my server and stream over Subsonic. This latest album does not get recognised by Subsonic, and I have no idea why. So this leads me to these questions:

1. How is album information found for a scanned folder? I'm assuming Subsonic uses an online service to lookup the album and add the correct information to the library?
2. Is there a way of manually providing the album info to Subsonic, either by manual entry, or by providing some album info file in the media folder (eg: .nfo file or .m3u file).

Album is Jess Glynn - Always In Between (Deluxe) by the way.

Thanks - JB

[acroyear]

The only thing it uses are the existing ID3 tags. If it doesn't find any, it tries to infer the artist and title from the folder structure (Music Folder Root / artist / album) and may choose to stick that into the database.

It will use last.fm to make associations (top songs, similar artists) AFTER it has the info, but not before. The info has to be found in the file.

There is an editing screen for every music directory that can be used to edit the tags after they're loaded. However, it can be problematic if a file has both artist and "album artist" settings (e.g., a compilation).

It is better, if at all possible, to first process the files in a proper local music manager like iTunes, get your tags in order (again be clear about album artist v artist - subsonic prioritizes album artist if it finds it), then copy the processed files into your subsonic folders.

If there is cover art embedded in the files, subsonic will use the artwork of the *first* file in a folder to represent the folder/album. It is not possible to have different artwork show up if 2 or more files in a folder have different embedded art. To get art to work like that you'll need to split them up somehow. If there is a local image file, it overrides the embedded art. there is an algorithm for the priority order in which it chooses which file to use, but I don't know all the details. JPG v PNG WILL make a difference. if you have one, then try to download the other and it has the same base filename (cover.png v cover.jpg) then one of those two will always override the other, no matter how much the other one changes and is 'newer'. I can't remember right now which is higher in priority, but it can become an issue if you have a cover.jpg in your folder and then fetch a new cover.png (or vice-versa depending on that priority) from last.fm through the UI screen.

[jjbrash2012]

Great answer, thanks. Actually, i think I now realise why the album is not being recognized. It's because when I ripped it off my CD I used some open source linux software called "Sound Juicer", which did not recognize the album in the first place. I did manually enter the album and track names there before the files were ripped, but I think it must only use that information to set the file & folder names, and does not set the ID3 tags. I'll see if I can set the ID3 tags for the files (they're FLAC files) tonight and then rescan with subsonic.

[jjbrash2012]

I've had a look the FLAC files that I got out of ripping the CD using Sound Juicer. The files do appear to contain the correct tags / metadata. I used some software called Mp3tag to view the tags in the files - all looks correct. I also view another FLAC album in Mp3tag, which has been recognized by Subsonic without a problem, and they appear to have correct tags ... so I can't see that there is anything wrong with the FLAC files for this new album.

Since typing out the paragraph above, I have just tried something: I deleted the subsonic db folder and restarted Subsonic, then rescanned the media folders, and now the new album has appeared correctly! So this suggests that there is an issue with my library database. Unfortunately by deleting the db folder I have lost all of my configuration (users, passwords, transcode settings etc ...). Luckily I can easily restore it to the way it was. Can anybody tell me how I can delete / reset only the media library and leave the user accounts and other preferences in tact?

[jjbrash2012]

Fixed this issue
1. I disabled the Music media path in Subsonic settings
2. Rescanned the remaining media folders
3. Performed a database cleanup (to remove all the Music media entries)
4. Re-enabled the Music media path
5. Scanned all media folders again

All good now. New album is there now. Must have been a corrupt database.

[tmwsiy]

are you using Windows?

This happened to me to after working fine for years. New albums simply were not showing up after scans.
The only remedy was doing what you did - but this is a cumbersome way to add albums and the resulting scan takes me a long time because my library is huge.
But I found out something interesting - if a folder's modified date doesn't change: Subsonic will not look in there for additions.
And for some reason, even when adding new album folders into an existing directory - Windows was not changing the folders properties.
I found a little utility called "Change Attributes" and now I can right-click the folder and update the modified date.....and Subsonic picks up the additions.
It is a hassle as I have to do this every time I add an album but better than the alternative.

[jjbrash2012]

@tmwsiy - I'm running Arch Linux. I don't think there is an issue with the my "Music" folder modification date. Since I had this issue I haven't added any more music to the folder so I haven't noticed if the issue still persists. I'll add something tonight and see if it scans in OK.

Thanks for the tip though!